651 Posts Found

Our relationship to time has become corrupted exactly because we allow ourselves very little experience of the timeless. We speak continually of saving time, but time in its richness is most often lost to us when we are busy without relief. At speed, the world becomes a blur, and all those other lives we encounter that aren’t our own become another blur, too.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Whyte | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Life, Time Management

Knowing what we know is less powerful than knowing who knows what.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sigvald Harryson | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Knowledge

Every great leader begins with a great dream. Ambitious visions not only require a capacity for meaningful change, but also provide the energy and inspiration to engage others. These tasks — articulating a dream and rallying others around it — are the essence of leadership. The study of leaders in every field tells us that leadership is the residue of ambition… Great leaders have an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James A. Champy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Achievement, Ambition, Leadership, Success / Failure

Everything we see hides something else we want to see.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Perception, Vision

A healthy knowledge ecology needs two types of contributors, characterized metaphorically as the serious scientist (analytical, focused, consistent) and the hungry artist (playful, transcending boundaries, unpredictable). How we bring together different cognitive styles largely determines the success of our strategic capabilities. The key is to insist that both types be equally grounded in the mission of the organization. With shared understanding of purpose we can … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Seely Brown | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Innovation, Knowledge

That to me answers the question of why people embrace bad ideas or ideas that don’t work. It’s because we’re human beings, and we find narratives that are very powerful and appeal to our emotions.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sylvia Nasar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Thought

One of the most powerful words in the English language is why. When asked as an interrogatory, why has the power to change assumptions, preconceptions and mindsets. It has the power to initiate change as well as the power to affirm the right course. It is a word that should be used frequently but with great care. When used the proper way, it can be … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Baldoni | Source: Darwin Magazine | Subjects: Leadership, Thought, Trends / Analysis

People are terrible at abstracting from the general to the specific, but great at abstracting from the specific to the general.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Jainschigg | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Thought

An economy doesn’t operate by market forces alone—it’s dependent on actions of business and consumers and government. There is a clear role for government in creating an environment in which business gets new opportunities. Yes, government should get out of spaces where it doesn’t have to be and let business do its thing. But government needs to be where there are so-called external effects, which … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bart van Ark | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Economics, Government, Politics

Einstein said that if he had an hour to save the world, he’d spend fifty-nine minutes defining the problem and one minute finding the solution. The reality is that people spend sixty minutes running around finding solutions to problems that don’t matter or that were never defined properly.

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen Shapiro | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Innovation, Problems / Solutions

Although we need not “correct” for luck when allocating economic reward it is worth considering the role of luck when allocating other valuable commodities, such as our moral approbation and our efforts to learn from the experiences of others. Those who win lotteries justifiably get to keep the money, but few of us admire lottery winners just because they won the lottery. (Don’t confuse envy … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jeff Schulz , Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Achievement, Luck

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Herbert Simon | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Attention, Information

Don’t wait for perfection, praise progress.

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael Wagner | Subjects: Achievement, Progress

Thinking “outside the box” is neither as desirable nor as liberating as it sounds, because the space outside the box is infinite. Faced with limitless possibilities, the human mind feels adrift and tends to fall back into the familiarity of “the box.” People cannot help using mental models, frameworks, and theories—or, as we called them, boxes—to organize their thinking. Thus, a far more powerful approach … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alan Iny, Luc de Brabandere | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Strategy, Thought

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lao Tzu | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Design, Innovation

The fundamental nature of problem solving is to drive something (the problem) out of existence. The fundamental nature of creating is to bring something that is desired into existence.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Fritz | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Creativity, Problems / Solutions

Business schools are teaching ethics and corporate social responsibility, but they do not teach these subjects in the context of building a higher-ambition or a high commitment, high performance firm. Students learn about finance and organizational behavior, for example, without ever learning how to integrate these and many other disciplines (marketing, operations, etc.) into a coherent, internally consistent set of practices that collectively reinforce a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael Beer | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Integrity, MBA Related

The gulf between the question you want to ask and the question you can answer is often unbridgeable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Knowledge

We shouldn’t take the view that we need a single narrative that unifies our experiences. Rather, we should carry multiple narratives simultaneously, continuously updating our estimates of the contours of each and our assessments of which is most likely to be right as new data points become available. Need to understand why your company is successful? Entertain the possibility that you’ve just been lucky, as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Knowledge, Wisdom

Managing knowledge is hard to do well because managing knowledge is hard to do at all. Knowledge is at once a process, an outcome, and a raw material. Managing knowledge thus cuts across all the familiar institutional boundaries, which is why some firms base their KM efforts in their IT departments, some in HR, some in “business strategy” departments, some in new departments set up … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: The Conference Board | Subject: Knowledge